marvin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture yesterday the president of the n.r.a. published an op ed painting america as the most dangerous place in the world of crime and danger lurks around every corner and where guns are our only salvation is defeating all gun control measures by scaring the hell out of america the n.r.a. has new strategy also next week georgia will likely execute it intellectually disabled man even though the u.s. supreme court has declared executing the mentally challenged illegal is the time we did away with the death penalty so that horrendous situations like the one in georgia can be avoided and later in the show we'll have a your take my take live your chance to call in and ask a question or make a comment live on the air.

you need to know this the n.r.a. is executive vice president wayne la pierre envisions an america beyond thunderdome in america that say for gun manufacturers but nobody else on wednesday la pierre published an op ed with a conservative website the daily caller explaining why gun safety is a bad idea and why americans must be armed to the teeth at all times over all of last years arguments in the in the apocalypse arriving soon la pierre writes president obama is leading this country to financial ruin borrowing over a trillion dollars a year for phony stimulus spending and other payoffs for his political cronies nobody knows it for a while until the fiscal collapse but it's a country is broke likely won't be enough money to pay for police protection and the american people know it here that war. urns of all the dangers that would arise

and this was all hypothetical where the president fired all the police he writes hurricanes tornados riots terrorists games lone criminals the these are perils we're sure to face not just maybe it's not paranoia by a gun it's served by all it's responsible behavior and it's time we encourage law abiding americans to do just that and don't forget about those undocumented immigrants who will kill us all for unarmed la pierre adds that president flagrantly defied the two thousand and six federal law ordering the construction of a secure border fence along the entire mexican border to the border they are remains porous not only to people seeking jobs in the u.s. but to crab out all those whose jobs are murder rape robbery and kidnapping so in other words being afraid grab your guns and if you don't have one by one from lisbon a factor that in effect sure this other man if actually gives us money and don't

just be afraid of marauding undocumented immigrants and terrorists and debt riots be afraid of your government to that was the gist of what la pierre said a few weeks ago when he testified in front of the senate on gun safety. we need the fire power in the ability to protect ourselves from our government from our government from the police if they knock on our doors and we need to fight back do you agree with the point of view center on it without any doubt if you look at why our founding fathers put it there they had lived under the tyranny of king george and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny the chief johnson you've heard it. the belief the n.r.a. is the second amendment has to give american citizens the firepower to fight back against you against our government that's not so how do you conduct your business in enforcing the law and not knowing what is behind that door i find it

a bit scary creepy and simply just not based on logic. well logic and the n.r.a. never got along so this is the n.r.a. his latest strategy defeat all gun control measures by scaring the hell out of america as my cabin tonio attorney and host of ring of fire radio mike welcome back . i'm great is wayne la pierre a raving lunatic or is this guy crazy like a fox not at all this is been focused to death look fear in america is a powerful moving force tom visions of smaller even massive apocalyptic events help listeners become irrational it makes them stupid to the point that it becomes easy and maybe even justified to even for a reason we educated americans to stand behind the senseless slaughter of our children in schools because that's that's the end of this sentence if you think about it but here's what's happened they didn't just come up with this themselves

this same madison avenue group who gave us the idea that smoking won't kill you and they did that for decades that kept people believing that if you smoke a cigarette you're going to be ok they were very very good at what they did these people have simply been hired now to do the same thing so these visions of latin america and african american drug gangs in this mad max kind of america that helps sell guns but it has been focused to death you start off with a culture who's who's very afraid to begin with and just just just throw gasoline on the fire you know i'm wondering where are the historians i mean i've read the federalist papers of. i've read you know many of the debates in the in the constitutional convention as madison recorded the i've read some of the ratifying conventions in fact just you know we just did a long piece of the virginia ratifying invention nobody ever was suggesting that americans should be armed to take on america it was always about in the north

anyway it was always about americans being armed or having local militia to protect us. more effectively than an army or to prevent a military coup by a standing army during times of peace and of course down in the south the states wanted to be armed so that their slave patrols could be could keep operating as as their local militias but nowhere did i see any of the founding fathers talk about well some day we you know we all may be may need guns just so we can shoot ourselves i mean we can shoot at the politicians who follow us i don't get it. you know you could look for ever and not find it because back then when that when we looked at the second amendment we we had a constitution that had some real meaning to people that were rational enough to read and understand it there wasn't the money factor involved tom today you have smith wesson smith and wesson ruger beretta bushmaster they're donating a hundred in fifty million dollars a year to the two hundred twenty seven million that the n.r.a.

brings in every year people don't understand that when you buy a gun the n.r.a. makes money they actually get a percentage there's something called the round up program tour they're actually paid a percentage in the end of gun sales and so if you're listening to these crazies understand they're not crazy they're just simply greedy thugs who've lost sight of decency and they've exchanged decency for the idea of making big money this is all about money and we forget that sometimes we want to overanalyze and say well gee the constitutional arguments don't make any sense the rational arguments don't make any sense of course they don't because we're dealing with hogs at the trough right now and so you have a guy like barry who's out front here this is a guy that has a long history of being a lobbyist everything that comes out of his mouth is said just like a lobbyist and he's very very good because he's focused the points he understands that we're he's dealing with american society that's fearful of damn near

everything so let's help it out by talking about the apocalypse right and he's earning his million dollar your paycheck apparently certainly is he certainly there was an n.r.a. spokes person or member document came out i believe it was late last week where they were talking about how you know their plans for lobbying and promoting gun ownership and whatnot in the future and for fighting against gun control laws basically they said let's just hold off for a moment this is a paraphrase in here let's just. hold off until the connecticut moment that was the phrase that they use right etiquette moment passes do you think that the connecticut moment obviously referring to the slaughter of those children in newtown connecticut do you think that that moment is going to pass as the n.r.a. thinks or do you think that the united states has actually turned a corner that the american people have looked at something ugly and said whoa now

now we know. president obama said it right he said until the american public gets angry enough to do something about it nothing will happen we've seen it with columbine we've seen it with aurora we've seen it with the sikh temple shooting it happens we have the media pay attention to it until the next story comes around and then the n.r.a. takes their two hundred twenty seven million dollars that they bring in every year and they simply pump out the machine and the machine the the machine makes us forget now what they've done now tom is that the n.r.a. is not as is interested in the national fight is they are in the state fight so they're going state to state and they're using this two hundred twenty seven million dollars to pack the attorney general's office the state supreme court office the state attorney's office there actually bringing about change state by state that's their new plan they say we don't really care about the national fight what we're going to do is we're going to win state by state anyway so you see these

secretive spook organizations like the this thing called the law enforcement alliance of america interesting organization it is the industry front it's the same thing as alec it's the same thing as the chamber of commerce for associated industries it is nothing but that for aught that goes state to state changing the laws state by state so they don't really care much about that national fight anymore they have to be out there for the fight but they really do care state by state that's where we're going to see the big money spent these next couple years and people will forget what happened this last massacre yeah it's it's extraordinary pap i'm curious your thoughts today chuck hagel was the first defense secretary ever filibuster i mean going back to the george washington administration the first time this is ever happened to a nomination for do so defense secretary by the president states and this is after harry reid took you know. breaking the turning the filibuster into

a talking filibuster. off the table because presumably mitch mcconnell had entered into a gentleman's agreement with him how do you think this is going to play out it's going to be a disaster that is going to be a disaster for obama for the next four years harry reid was a miserable failure there's no other way to say it he knew exactly what was coming at him can you imagine sitting in a room with a bunch of republicans listening to them say look you can trust us you can ignore our history ignore what we've done for these last four years you can trust us the problem with harry reid is he's too damn old for the job i was just with harry reid he came to you came to los vegas on a program that i put on several months ago and he was he was so weak in his presentation up in front of the in front of this group of people i had to ask the people who brought him to please get him off of the stage because he is so weak and he's a weak leader and that's why the by allowing the filibuster reform not to take place

all he's done is he's created four more years of gridlock disaster obama has his hands tied obama can give us the best state of the union speech of the he wants he can have great ideas about the future but harry reid blew it and there's no other way to dress this up tome. but i think you have zero it might happen tony thanks a lot for joining us then you. after the break what is it that conservatives don't understand when it comes to the rules of capitalism and don't americans struggling to survive deserve to make wages they can live off a. wealthy british son. will.

markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max kaiser for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on r g. c c.

it's. in the best of the rest of the news let's talk football as we all know football is again and like all games football has rules there are rules on the field like how many players can be on the field how many downs each team gets how many yards for a first down stuff like that you know fine if there were no rules on the field it would be chaos there also rules off the field there are salary caps so that one

team can spend way more money buying up all the good players than another team has revenue sharing so the teams in smaller cities like green bay can stay on a level playing field with teams in bigger cities like dallas and when one team does really well in one season they have to go to the bottom of the draft or to the next season while the worst team from the season goes to the top of the draft or to the following year all of these rules are necessary to create a dynamic competitive game that tens of millions of americans a lot for example do no fun at the dallas cowboys since they're wealthier than all the other teams could just buy up all the good players get all the good draft picks horde all the revenue they can collect and win every single super bowl right so that's why there are rules capitalism is again too and it needs rules to rules ranging from how much money banks need to have on the books reserve capital requirements how much pollution companies can dump in the environment to what can and cannot be patented or copyright and in tuesday's state of the union address president obama proposed changes to one of the rules of capitalism the minimum wage

a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line that's wrong tonight let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth no one who works full time should have to live in poverty and raise the federal minimum wage to nine dollars so here's an idea that governor romney and i actually agreed on last year. let's tie the minimum wage to the cost of living so that it finally becomes a wage you can live on just like the rules are needed in football to keep the game competitive a basic minimum wage is needed our economy to keep it competitive too we need rules so that working people can still be productive members of the economy so that someone working forty hours a week is not living in poverty unfortunately republicans in congress aren't going along with this speaker boehner responded to the president's call for a minimum wage increase by saying to raise the president well i don't guess what happens you get less of it at a time when americans are still asking the question where are the jobs why would we

want to make it harder for small employers to hire people you must also want to make it easier for the dallas cowboys to win every single super bowl because they're the wealthiest team so what is it that conservatives just don't understand when it comes to rules and capitalism let's ask austin peterson director of production at freedom works an editor at the libertarian republic dot com ok auster what is that you guys don't get about having just basic rules for capital you know there should be rules but the rules should be the rule of law and the way that economics works is that if you have a minimum wage what happens is is that all the people who are unskilled labor are able to get jobs what you're doing is you're raising that tsar's on a lot you're raising the bar of the ladder and so people are unable to serve that something is true yes i am sort of their head is very true to name which years the probably should minimum wage increase because increasingly what happens if you have it happen here's what happens if you don't use one please let me answer your question if you increase wages what happens is that employers in order to pay for

it they increase prices so you get inflation and so if he comes more expensive it's an hour for people to be able to live this summer so every time that you increase you want to be responsibly please ok there are a number of things that are being an employer for years and years i can tell you there are a number of things employers do in response to anything from minimum wage increases to simply your employees come in and say we want a raise and that if you can become more efficient you can have people were more hours or work better or smarter you could. the productivity of the equipment that you're using with people you can produce your own profit so the are your own take home pay and ultimately had the very end of the day you can increase the increase prices if you want to and if you look at the studies on the minimum wage what you find is that american employers since the one nine hundred thirty s. when the minimum wage was first put into effect have consistently virtually every single time have have chosen the first three long before they raise prices because if i raise prices i'm making myself less right in with the next person who way well that's what the first minimum wage homes wage laws were made because they wanted to make sure that blacks were not able to compete with white labor so if you look

remember the ninety's wage laws. yes this reality is going to be no one as they don't know what workers got over what are they going to have a zillion these negatives that are even has to go you know that the minimum wage laws are meant to kill so it is not a lot of jobs yes it is that's meant to keep people who are unskilled labor from being able to get jobs why don't we raise the minimum wage to one hundred dollars an hour tom why do liberals never realize that you are here you're going to win a lot of snow dollars and dogs and our song was are out let's start out with your are no it's destroying the economy this is us capitalism was for a minute destroying people's livelihoods are destroying lives women and children not for a second not it's not about racism it is adding the first guy who proposed minimum wage you know was who was it it was it was president try a parent president teddy roosevelt this isn't president i see under of the progressive era awful lickin presidents of nice you know one of them as you know never seen in the united states you're a wilson who segregated the military the father the progressive daughter own the lot and we'll call isabel was talking about how minimum wage she called a living wage she said a living wage must be necessary to be able to raise your kids have it have make it

through times of sickness right i had was an economic idiot just like every other president i know what the real minimum wage is tom and i had zero you to the real minimum wage of zero certainly as long as you just long as you are destroying jobs so you want to create jobs so your work you have to allow capitalism to work set stable rules and recapitalising without any trade policies trade policies such as what time. of course you want to get rid of all the trade policies as well so forget minimum wage again i defy you to name one a year we've had we've had a minimum wage since nine hundred thirty five one year when raising the minimum wage caused unemployment to go up or cause an increase in the in the in the of people unskilled labor who can't find you i can't answer that question no you can't answer that question if you were it does not exist lol yeah every stories i am on isn't statistic every single time the minimum wage has gone up what happens is people who are minimum wage workers spend one hundred percent of their income those are the job fairs and are going to that's where you want to close the job creators in our economy and if you give more money to people who spend

a hundred percent or even today to siberia picking winners will get there are right there to be rendered leisure time by wiser picking when to go into stores etc by this there are by this i like that broad i know it's meant to keep minorities dennis is absolutely it is yeah why it has gathered even though it does is it on the avenue we want to stop as they are the hard on the most from these poskim your women riding on the waters drying to stop the job creators from being job creation i'm not tom i'm in a one way off words harming our minimum wage workers are the job creators and you want to keep them from creating more jobs one person ever gave you a job tom every single poor person who ever spent money every time every business that i've ever owned where i was selling products i was selling products to consumers and those consumers in many cases were poor people in the system this is no way this ever since adam savage won while it's not every back and rewrote that made us wage war theory of moral sentiments actual he wasn't totally perfect as well there while there was an ok day every day on every card i was eighteen i was seven on labor i mean he lays it out in this is this this is not more money does

not or paychecks not when inflation rises along with the wages because every time you raise the wages minimum wages has never has never lead to inflation if it leads to increases in economic or i will do well if it was the side indeed we will often peterson thank you thank you don. in secret is next week the state of georgia will execute war lee hill and intellectually disabled man who is deemed mentally retarded at trial unless the u.s. supreme court steps in and takes up the case but the u.s. supreme court shouldn't have to step in that's because that highest court in the land has already ruled that executing individuals deemed mentally retarded their phrase not mine violates the eighth the men and the if the man wants ban on cruel and i knew our usual punishment our thanks to a very harsh procedural tact technicality in georgia state law that state has

managed to work around the supreme court's ruling warren lee hill isn't the first intellectually challenged individual to be on death row in america he certainly won't be the last everything stays the way it is so it's not time we did away with the death penalty and came up with responsible alternatives to this barbaric practice joining me now is mike farrell actor author and president of death penalty focus like welcome back to the program thanks john nice to be with you thanks for joining us what are your thoughts on the war and lee health case that's in georgia right now well you know it's you it's easy fortunately easy to point to georgia as being a backward state to do with regard to criminal justice issues you look back at troy davis and you look forward to the war in a legal case you you understand that. really executives situation but it is i think it's indicative of the fact that it is. very inappropriate

system continues to exist in our country as you suggested why can't we just wake up and realize that there are alternatives that keep us safe but don't waste all the money that it definitely has and the don't dehumanize. people and don't do human eyes us in the process and also that don't put to death innocent people i mean that the death penalty is irrevocably all and every year we find another dozen fifty one hundred people who have been you know in our d.n.a. evidence had been sent off to die back you know decades ago and it's just it's just now how is georgia managing to skirt federal law in this case well they've they've generally unfortunately allowed rather than simply applying it they said they left it up to the states to determine what constitutes retardation or on one with retardation and the beyond a reasonable doubt premise or position is the one that georgia has maintained

whereas throughout the country in the rest of the killing states at least the preponderance of the evidence really makes a determination as to whether or not one is one is so good it has retardation so the atkins decision was written by justice stevens and allowed a certain amount of latitude to the states georgia has taken advantage of that latitude and has made the the beyond a reasonable doubt philosophy the preponderant decision making philosophy in a case of despair. a determination of mental retardation and it's very easy for somebody to say well i have a reasonable doubt so we have a case of a warren lee hill who has an i.q. of about seventy. facing death for a situation that in no other state in the union today would he be facing death and it's it's. if you look at situations like you know about the case of andre thomas

in texas i mean it was plugged both of his eyes as a result of his paranoia and is still looking at death in texas they are the prosecutorial ranks are filled with people who want to win a conviction and win an execution because it somehow makes them passive passed off as as more leaders in their community well that's a sign that we have really trip down a very ugly road and our our our teaching our children as well as teaching each other that human life means nothing with him like in the half a minute or so we have left can you tell us about your group death penalty focus. death only focus is a california based group that it operates across the country opposing the death penalty we came within four percentage points of eliminating death in california and with proposition thirty four in the last election and we will clearly end the

use of that not only in california as we are now in maryland very soon i think in montana it is very close you know hampshire is looking at it connecticut as you know just did it and the use of the death penalty so the that the tide is in the tide is in our favor everybody is beginning to understand that as you segregating innocent people that it's it's a racially biased hugely expensive system that is going to just corrupting as they are committed barbarity and then the name of the state we all become a little more barbarous and that's a real tragedy of society like feral thanks so much for being with us tonight my pleasure we'll be right back with your take my.

explicit. colors myself. why. am i gonna. see. if. it is easy to be. elite.

it's. the sound. but about the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour today is

valentine's day so what better way to celebrate than to talk about the various ways other members of the animal kingdom keep their relationship fire burning in tonight's geeky science i'll tell you about a species of bird that really knows how to show a lot and if you talk to john boehner eric cantor of the rest of the republicans on the hill said the federal government sixteen trillion dollar debt is a huge problem a threat to our nation but in reality it's not there is a debt in this nation far worse and far more devastating i'll tell you about it in tonight's deleted. welcome your take my take live our phone lines are now open so if you want to share an opinion make a comment ask a question live on the air give us a call to a two nine zero four twenty one thirty four so for his call or the night denny in morgan field kentucky what's up. i was on but your minimum wage bill yeah i've been

a small business owner for thirty years and raise the minimum wage only increases how does the placement and the other thing is that how somebody gets hurt the most i raise the minimum wage is the people that great and don't get a raise women rights comes there or in place you cause them to actually have lives i howard than they have because minimum wage increase denny i've been an employer for over thirty years and i just have to fundamentally disagree with you you know i don't know if you genuinely aren't employer i appreciate you calling in by the way but or if you're you know just trying to get that talking point out but i can tell you the minimum wage and all the research is there it's it's quite solid it's and common sense would dictate it by the way that when you put more money in the pockets of people at the bottom of the economic ladder who are going to spend all of it we're not talking about raising the way shot on just on the resume nine dollars then those people spend that money and that stimulates the economy creates

demand not inflation demand or causes inflation or price shocks things like well that in the seventy's the arabs cutting off the oil to the united states and the price of oil driving up that's what causes inflation not the minimum wage in fact today's minimum wage would be ten dollars and twenty five cents an hour if we had simply indexed the one nine hundred sixty one minimum wage to inflation if it's simply an extra two inflation and so then there has been deflation as a consequence of paul in boise idaho paul watson. hey tom good to talk to a first time caller that's from and i totally agree with your. when your agreement with the minimum wage increase in fact i do think it should be at least ten dollars an hour and the other thing that i wanted to touch on was. you know compared to you know say when reagan took over and. you know wages stagnated since then the

price of real estate has you know skyrocketed so you know how is a person supposed to cheat the american dream. if you are if you can't make a livin to start with and then you can't afford to buy houses well what you're what you're pointing out paul and thank you for doing so is the consequence of moving from what's called a manufacturing economy to what's called a fire economy used to be that about a third a little over a third of our total economy about twenty percent of it is government about a third of our total economy was actually caused it was manufacturing and then you go you know another twenty percent fifteen to twenty percent that's medical and you've got you know retail portions but. we have moved from a third of our economy being manufacturing and about ten percent of our economy being finance real estate and insurance find it finance insurance and real estate f.-i our bus fire we've gone from mostly manufacturing and a little bit of fire economy to the exact reverse we are now over thirty i think it's thirty five percent or something like that is is the fire economy and only

eight nine ten eleven maybe it's a lot or twelve percent is well actually here's there's the chart you can see and as that fire economy has gone up what that means is that you know real estate is is going up artificially in price because that's the new economy so everybody is chasing that as manufacturing collapses and what collapses along with manufacturing good paying jobs so you have people not you know they're not getting good paying jobs are not getting good wages you can see it's now eleven point two percent if i'm reading the chart right and whereas the economy is now in that twenty one percent twenty one point nine percent so you know that's what's happened and so the good paying manufacturing jobs have gone away we used to be able to use to buy a house and they've been replaced with jobs and in finance and real estate joe in just geneva joe what's up. yeah i was just on the internet. here and there and i came across two of the biggest so-called american

patriots fighting for gun rights in this country. pierre and. la pierre i heard. he basically got out of going to vietnam by having a nervous habit i don't know if you heard anything about that or i haven't. well i mean if he if it is true wouldn't it be considered a. mental health risk should be allowed to own a gun. i don't know joe thanks thanks for the call. i just i am not a wayne la pierre scholar i know ted ted nugent had a colorful story that he liked to tell back in the seventies i guess it was high times magazine about how he got out of the draft. frankly i'm a little ambivalent about that i was of that generation and we knew that the vietnam war was a lie and the gulf of tonkin resolution was a lie and it was

a bad war wasn't it wasn't like my dad's war in a world war two. so i'm not going to criticize these guys for that i think that just criticizing sloppier and ted nugent for taking it for basically being shills for the gun industry might happen tony pointed out earlier this this is an industry that is putting one hundred over one hundred million dollars a year into its marketing arm its lobbying arm which is the n.r.a. and we should be buying their stuff i mean we shouldn't be buying these stories we should be paying attention to who they are where they're going to get money from mark in evanston illinois hey mark you want to talk about guns. kind of. can you speak up a little bit you're on the air i'm listening to you ok ok. i get the distinct impression you're completely and. maybe i am

wrong ok. i want to tell you something. else for years. to. sixty two years old quite frankly i don't feel safe. i'm handed a disabled no way to defend my. gun. i'm sorry what i don't want to take away your gun i'm a sport should i sell my i am i am what i'm what i'm suggesting and what i've been consistently suggesting on this program is number one the weapons of war should be on the battlefield not in our cities and number two that. as. a weapon of war should be on the battlefield not in your home and you don't thirty rounds in it to protect yourself listen let me tell you something. off.

prick my language but. let's look at. there is no gun problem there is a color problem is black. thanks to try and. this this is racist crap i don't say that it's just it's tragic it's truly tragic. gun violence in the white community there's gun violence the black community there's gun and if anything what is symptomatic of gun violence in the united states first of all people are twice as likely to committing suicide with a gun this is you know this from personal experience when i was. who was having some struggle with depression was able to walk down the street buy a gun went back to his bedroom put in his mouth and blew the back of his head all over the wall and i was one of the people found it and i believe to this day that if that of clark had not been able to walk in easily by that gun he'd still be

alive and he would've gotten help number one and number two. i'll just leave it at that actually that's it that's enough i've said might actually number two i think that if we're if we have for saying that for cars because they can kill people you get that you register them you prove that you're competent to use them and you insure them we should certainly do the same for guns and i don't see why any responsible gun owner would not say you know hey i'm a responsible car owner all register my car i have liability insurance and i can prove that i can drive why can't you do the same thing with a gun i've been through gun safety courses and gun training everyplace in the georgia police academy to to an n.r.a. course and i think you know this is this is easy stuff thomas in milwaukee wisconsin a thomas what's on. your on the air thomas. ms thomas please when i'm calling is in regards to the minimum wage when i was first employed

back in the seventy's had a cost of living it kept up with the economy thanks to ronald reagan who. traffic controllers back to work back to work when you want. to that's when the cost of living went away now you have the minimum wage a family of four especially a state of wisconsin. cannot possibly make it on minimum wage. from jobs before and now i'm back in the workforce the minimum wage will not. survive for minimum wage a lot of businesses small businesses who minimum wages what they want to make money off those employees they don't have good health care. good. the only way that i can make it and be rich is by keeping the minimum wage but what

about the employee the long employee who comes in to work. out who does what he's supposed to on the job make money for you. thomas. my interrupt you but i only have thirty seconds to wrap this segment up and i just wanted to echo your i totally agree with what you're saying and let me add to that that with the minimum wage right now a full time minimum wage employee is still taking money from the government they're eligible for food stamps and medicare and other forms of government assistance on the other hand if we raise the minimum wage up to the point where people are no longer in poverty they start paying taxes into the government if we should be selling those the republicans should be selling us as a deficit reduction program so that's it for your take my take live thank you for all of your calls if we didn't get your call tonight tries back again next week. after the break politicians in washington love to argue and mowen about america's sixteen trillion dollars in government debt but there's

a far more insidious type of debt one that has the ability to destroy our economy you know really nasty tell you what it is and how we can do away with him tonight. wealthy british style. is not on the title of.

markets why not come to find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cons or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our. download the official ati application to your cell phone choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites from alzheimer's if you're away from your television or it just doesn't matter now with your mobile device you can watch r.t. anytime anywhere. let me let me i want to know what all let me ask you a question from. here on this network is what we're having a debate we have our knives out. but if you get this right it's a bad thing mary gearin a fixed rate will be an ideal way to talk about the surveillance.

it's thursday let's get geeky on going all out for our mates today is valentine's day so what better way to celebrate this day of love than by talking about how far some animals go to impress and take care of their loved ones according to a new study j. birds who are in love go out of their way to feed their mates the food that the mate loves and craves researchers at cambridge university in england discovered this sweet and enduring behavior by taking pairs of mated jaybirds and putting them in adjoining compartments so that the male could see what the female was doing through a small window the researchers then fed the female a meal of sumptuous larva in one particular of one particular kind of larva either wax moth larva or a meal worm larva as her partner looked on her a lot of birds literally were then reunited and the male jaybird took on its usual row role of feeding food to its better half they were given

a choice between the two types of larva available the mate now chose to feed his sweetheart the type of larva that she hadn't just been eating a lot of his female jaybirds. like variety in their warms the male jaybird hadn't been watching its mate eat and he fed or whatever larva he like he felt like and the same was true if he was feeding himself his choice was not affected by what his lover had been eating according to the researchers searchers at cambridge the fact that the male jaybird chose to give his plucky partner what she was likely to appreciate what she had been choosing more of what you'd like. more of suggests that the male jaybird has the cognitive ability to understand and interpret the psychotic psychological state of the female partner just by watching her so many other day men of the world and still valentine's day so it's not too late to get your special someone that larva or chocolate that they really desire.

there are two kinds of debt one that's relatively harmless and one that can destroy us all there's public sector debt or government debt the blueline here which is over sixteen trillion dollars this is the sort of debt the politicians like to scream about this from here. when they demand austerity and then there's the private sector debt that's this red line that's the debt owed by you and me and millions of americans across the nation in the form of credit cards home and car loans and america's corporate debt this sort of debt doesn't seem to bother politicians at all even though total private sector debt is right now thirty eight trillion dollars more than double government debt more than double our g.d.p. . now here's what you need to know. private sector debt. excuse me

public sector debt is not a problem at all our national debt despite the big number is not a threat to our nation currently our national debt is roughly one hundred percent g.d.p. after world war two it was much higher as over one hundred twenty percent of g.d.p. but rather than freaking out in the one nine hundred fifty s. and demanding austerity spending cuts both republican and democratic presidents harry truman to eisenhower and lawmakers grew our nation out of the so-called debt problem with government spending there were massive government investments to build the interstate highway system to send returning g.i.'s to college and to grow the social safety net we built schools and hospitals all across the country and it worked with more government investments more americans were put to work which meant they had more money to spend which meant more businesses hired more people to keep up with the higher demand which meant americans all around were earning more money

and pay more revenue into the government through taxes our debt to g.d.p. ratio plummeted from its peak of over one hundred twenty percent in the one nine hundred forty s. to below fifty percent in one nine hundred seventy s. but here and then reagan came along gave billionaires a massive tax cut increased defense spending and our national debt exploded again but two presidents later bill clinton had a had the budget balance the nation on track to completely eliminate the national debt within ten years george w. bush blew up that plan with his tax cuts his wars as corporate giveaways and his economic crash so now we have a pretty massive debt again although not as big as the one that truman and eisenhower faced and beat. our nation has a long history from the revolutionary war to the civil war to world war two a dealing with national debt that's higher than we have right now and reducing debt levels that are much higher than we see today that's why government debt is not

a problem right now with just a small amount of political will it can be solved pretty easily more government investments to put people to work and more taxes on the rich they can pay their fair share again have always solved the past on the other hand private sector debt is a huge problem not only as a devastating the livelihoods of millions of americans around them it's also pushing our economy toward collapse after world war two total private debt was below fifty percent of g.d.p. today it's more than two hundred fifty percent of g.d.p. which is even higher than it was. just before the last great depression. there are several reasons for this the first is that when reagan stopped in force in the sherman antitrust act businesses started merging in acquiring each other like crazy because the changes in the rules and how that could be done private equity or l.b.o. firms came into existence companies like bain capital drive in the monopolistic

merger process with trillions of dollars in debt today virtually every corporate merger involves the company taking on huge debt while the executives in the pirate equity boys take home billions the result is that most of those private sector debt is corporate debt and that is dangerously high it's a teetering towering house of cards remember how it looked just before or just right around the time of the nash of the great depression and then there's household debt since reagan americans have not been paid more for their increased productivity. so wages have failed to keep up with the rising costs of housing energy education and health care. to make ends meet americans had to extend their credit lines they turned their home mortgages and a.t.m. machines further sinking into debt also there was a housing bubble which was caused by banks pushing mortgages of debt on millions of americans knowing that those same americans were unlikely to be able to pay down

those liar loans as mortgages and debt but the banks made a ton of money selling off that bad debt to other investors before the market went bust and the banks also made a fortune skimming fees off the top of every single transaction and of course all the losses that the banks alternately did incur during the crisis. they were repaid by us by our government thanks to the bailouts but nobody seemed to care about the debt that everyone else who wasn't a banks are still have. nobody except the banks who are still trying to suck more and more money out of their indebted customers and are now bringing back debtors prisons to help in this effort. arkansas a in arkansas breast cancer survivor lisa lindsay was thrown in jail because she didn't pay a two hundred eighty dollars medical bill which was charged to her by mistake debtors prisons haven't officially been used in america since before the civil war

but today a third of the states in the country allow debt collectors to use the public court system to go after people who owed the money is even a lot arkansas that allows landlords to throw tenants in jail if they're late on their rent. so in a roundabout way the debtors' prisons have returned to america. this is a huge problem because economies depend upon consumers people like you and me spending money before in debt up to our eyeballs and being thrown in prison for that debt we can't spend more money to stimulate the economy this is what economist steve kean told me on my radio show this week. that's why you run across is this is all i'm. going to do in the trying to get this through to people it's the dynamics of profit did that really have to. go on and on the crunch are in now. while debt can be useful and free up more spending in the economy we've reached a point where businesses and individual americans can no longer afford to go deeper

into debt and a major reason why the economy continues to stagnate after the collapse is because americans are paying down their debt rather than spending money in the economy and the more americans continue to pay down their debt instead of spending the worst of the economy will get when this happens keen told me you plunge off the cliff even government stimulus can't help at this point whether it was bush's stimulus at the end of two thousand and eight that gave everyone a couple hundred bucks or obama's stimulus in two thousand and nine any extra money americans get from the government is diverted away from the economy and put instead toward paying down their huge individual debts and that has no stimulative effect on the economy at all it just makes more money for banks trips if private debt was fifty percent of g.d.p. like in the one nine hundred fifty s. that americans could afford to both buy things and pay down their own debt and ditto for businesses. but a two hundred fifty percent of g.d.p.

private sector debt strangles the economy and sets the stage for a looming economic collapse. so what's to be done well here's a solution we should wipe the worst and most destructive of the private sector debt the debt that prevents people from spending we should wipe it off the books keane the economist from australia calls for a debt jubilees here in america. i think the only way out of this is to abolish the debt and you can't do it and a lot of the damage is. innocent lost and as an ice so i took a look at all the modern digital age use usenet see it money can ask the government to pay off a launch amount of profit that's a benefit site it is a science so basically that means using the government to simply payoff much of the individual debt across america for mortgages to student loans to credit cards this is also the approach occupy wall street is taking with its strike debt campaign though that organization is also relying on private donations to help buy people's

overdue debt at a cheap price and then just completely wipe it out a debt jubilee is not a radical idea in fact it's promoted in the bible in the book of leviticus which calls for a debt jubilee every forty nine years as leviticus twenty five ten reads this fiftieth year is sacred it is a time of freedom and of celebration when everyone will receive back their original property and slaves will return home to their families debt cancellation is supported in the koran too and it was use in ancient athens and many native american societies wiping out private debt would unleash a norm of spending in our economy in ways we haven't seen since the boom years of the one nine hundred fifty s. and the one nine hundred sixty s. the only reason seriously being considered by our lawmakers today is because a debt jubilee would cut into the profits of the banks toure's who thrive in fact preyed on indebted nation but in the not too distant future as our cause. he

continues to collapse under the weight of tens of trillions of dollars in private sector debt our nation will be faced with an alternate choice strike or watch our economy completely co-op's in a way that will make one nine hundred twenty nine look like a picnic let's make the right choice now. and that's the way it is tonight's thursday feb fourteenth two thousand and thirteen happy valentine's day for more information check out our website so thom hartmann dot com free speech or are. in. the big picture and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there get active today your it occupies something you'll see tomorrow.

couldn't take three days for three. arrangements three. three stooges free. videos for your media projects a free media. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images has been seeing from the streets of canada. for asians are today.

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